Ahmedabad: Memories of the Una incident that rocked the state in July 2016 are still seething in the minds of Gujarat’s Dalits. Less than a year later, the caste-based violence in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh has further angered the state’s Dalits and prompted them to start a new movement.

About 50 Dalit activists of Gujarat have come together to form a committee, called the Ambedkar Vechan Pratiband Samiti, that has embarked upon a statewide rally from June 3. The idea of the committee emerged after Dalit activists who had travelled to Saharanpur to extend solidarity came back to with stories of how the name and legacy of Dr Ambedkar was being misused by mainstream politicians.

“Following the violence against the Dalits in Saharanpur, Raghav Lakhanpal Sharma, the BJP MP in Saharanpur took out a rally which he called an ‘Ambedkar Shobha Yatra’ with his party workers carrying a photograph of Babasaheb. Ironically, there were no Dalit participants in the rally that went through the Muslim dominated areas of the district with participants shouting slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Yogi Yogi’ all along,” said Manjibhai Jadav, a veteran activist who is the convenor of the Samiti.

The Dalits in Gujarat have also reacted strongly to the Kushinagar incident where people of the Musahar community were given soap and shampoo by Uttar Pradesh government to get cleaned before chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s visit. The women of Gujarat’s Valmiki community recently announced they would send a 4-foot-high soap weighing 125 kilograms, with an image of Gautam Buddha carved on it, to Yogi Adityanath. The Valmikis are considered the ‘lowest’ sub-caste amongst the Dalits.